A friend recently posed the question to me: are Gun Outfit really good, or are they just really cool? I didn’t know the answer, with only limited experience listening to the lauded underground band, but all it took was a short walk on a Monday night in February to formulate some thoughts on the matter. Gun Outfit were slated to perform at Beautiful World Syndicate, a record shop whose modest, slapdash in-person appearance belies their unprecedented Discogs business; records are priced to move, graded fairly, and sold by the truckload. As of this writing, their account has 232,297 ratings with 99.9% positive feedback… it’s like if Doordash was owned and operated by half a dozen punks who smelled like weed. Alongside renowned local shredder Emily Robb, Scena and Sam Silbert rounded out the bill, two acts that were new to me. All that’s left is to roll through!

Up first was Sam Silbert, though he was far from alone. Seated with his dime-store acoustic guitar, Silbert was surrounded by friends on drums, bass, a second acoustic guitar, and keys. With multiple hoodies and ballcaps in position (the bassist even pulled off an impressive sunglasses-on-hood-over-hat technique), the group strummed along to Silbert’s rootsy indie-folk. Perhaps too weary for his young age, Silbert sang with what I would chalk up as more nerves than pretentiousness, his words obscured by his hesitant, mic-avoidant delivery (though what I could hear revealed a capable voice). The band were having a fine ol’ time together, catching each other’s eyes to hit the chord changes and song endings. I liked the tune where they bopped around a bass-line redolent of Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker” in their Realtree outdoor hunting gear, though it remains unconfirmed if any of them have actually split firewood or simply looked the part. MJ Lenderman and Ryan Davis came to mind as somewhat responsible for this particular resurgent strain of knee-slapping rural-rock; there’s plenty of time and opportunity for Sam Silbert to become one of their peers.

Scena were up next, though not in any apparent hurry. As if there wasn’t enough inherent sadism in a four-band Monday night bill! Performing as a duo (or a trio, depending on how you value technology) – bass-guitarist, guitarist/vocalist, iPhone for backing tracks – Scena’s soundcheck bled into meandering, ambient drones that may or may not have been their first “song”. From there, they moved into a suite of morose, hypnotic guitar music that disregarded time in a rewarding way. The second song’s hushed chords over looped trip-hop drums recalled Duster; other pieces reflected the grey tide pools of Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and the narcotic swirl of Flying Saucer Attack. More music emanated from the pre-recorded iPhone tracks than the two human players for quite a large portion of the set, but until this becomes a typical trope, I find it to be an odd yet entertaining juxtaposition in a live setting. The crowd noticeably thinned out during Scena’s set, to the point where the temperature in the room dropped; a satisfying effect for music that felt so desperately lonely. I simply put my winter beanie back on and gazed into the pale blue light reflected from the foil-embossed patterns of a copy of Danzig’s Danzig 4P on the wall, drawn in by the mysterious sound of Scena.

With Silbert’s friends smoking outside and Scena having artfully siphoned away the remaining audience’s energy, the blowtorch guitar of Emily Robb arrived in the nick of time. Unaccompanied and unbothered, Robb exuded a confidence found in both master musicians and Mardi Gras drunkards. After a couple shorter pieces, she asked the crowd if it was loud enough, and when someone meekly quipped, “It’s never loud enough”, she hollered back, “You asked for it!”, cranked her amp and left the people next to me no choice but to plug their ears with their pointer fingers for the rest of the set. Huzzah! With so much touring under her belt at this point, Robb was comfortably in command, harnessing the primitive origins of fuzz guitar and doing donuts in the parking lot with it. One song seemed to meld the first part of Television’s “Friction” with Link Wray’s “Rumble”, though it was the extended closer that took us higher, a chugging biker-metal loop that she scattered, smothered and covered like ZZ Top’s Tres Hombres gatefold image.

This leads us back to the original question. Are Gun Outfit a style-over-substance ensemble championed by hip elites since the mid ’00s? It’s kind of an unfair question, or at least an unfair place to start, but their set provided a decisive answer: they’re the real deal! Now based in Los Angeles, and boasting none other than living legend Henry Barnes (of goddamn Amps For Christ and Man Is The Bastard!) on bass, this charming quartet delivered the goods: a polished mix of tender Americana indie and desert-dry garage. Drummer Daniel Swire carried the poise, pizzazz and prescription glasses of ’90s Max Weinberg, raising and lowering his volume with impressive ease. Swire brought a tasteful, sophisticated spark to the patina-rich melodies of Dylan Sharp and Carrie Keith – I’ve been searching for a word to best describe the delicate, complicated emotions their songs conjured, but keep landing dumbly on “beautiful”. Sharp has a friendly speak-sing, a thoughtful and reserved middle child between Stephen Malkmus and Kurt Vile, and Keith’s voice held it like hands, soft and firm. With the aura-cleansing presence of Henry Barnes in the back, the neck of his bass occasionally bobbing dangerously over Swire’s head, I felt foolish for being a suspicious outsider to this nourishing band mere hours earlier. After hearing one song in particular, I knew I wanted to hear it again, so I memorized as many lyrics as I could to look it up when I got home. Turns out it’s “Teardrops (Classic Hell On Earth)”, listed to appear on the group’s sixth formal full-length Process And Reality (set for a May 2026 release). There’s a Mike Stoltz-directed live video of “Teardrops” out there on the web that I’m happy to recommend – it’s been tiding me over as I wait for the studio recording. If you’ve been reading Yellow Green Red for a while, this surely won’t be the first time my folly is your gain.